🎙 Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.

In this episode, Haggai Klorman Eraqi sits down with Gadi Benjamini, Co-Founder & CEO of FireDome, an ex–Israeli intelligence operator from Unit 81 turned deep-tech founder building an autonomous, on-site wildfire defense system.

This conversation starts with collapse: Gadi shutting down his first climate startup after October 7, going through the emotional crash that follows, and then finding his way into a problem that feels almost ancient and futuristic at the same time: fire.

Wildfires are no longer distant natural disasters. They are becoming a stress test for humanity for our infrastructure, insurance systems, communities, governments, and ability to protect what we love before it disappears.

Gadi and his co-founder, Adi Naor Pomerantz, saw what many people only realize after the smoke clears: insurance may compensate you, but it does not protect your home, your vineyard, your factory, your campsite, your memories, or your continuity.

That insight became FireDome: a hardware-software system designed to detect, prepare for, and suppress wildfire threats on-site before they become unstoppable.

We get tactical on:

• Why “insurance ≠ protection”

• The human drama behind wildfires: homes, communities, wineries, campsites, and generational businesses lost in hours

• Why fires expose the limits of modern civilization

• The FireDome approach: firebreak + structure coating + rapid detection/suppression

• How ember showers create a domino effect through neighborhoods

• Hardware realities: capsules, cadence, water logistics, wind, manufacturing, and deployment

• What Palisades-style fires revealed about prevention, firefighting, and resilience

• How founders can capture attention authentically by speaking directly to the pain people already feel

This is a conversation about deep tech, climate adaptation, founder resilience, and what it means to build when the problem is not theoretical — it is already burning.

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SAVE 10% ON BETTER WEIGHT FOR LIFE’S GLP-1 PROGRAMS WITH CODE AGGAEUS10 (LIMITED TIME).

Better Weight For Life is a transformational weight loss program led by a U.S. board-certified physician—designed to keep it simple: personalized GLP-1 treatment, expert support, and discreet delivery.

They offer options including Ozempic®, Wegovy®, Zepbound®, Mounjaro®, plus compounded semaglutide and compounded tirzepatide (eligibility depends on your medical evaluation).

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Aggaeus content is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should conduct your own research and consult qualified professionals before making any decisions.

We may feature companies, products, or entities in which Aggaeus, its affiliates, or the author have invested or may invest, or with which they have had, have, or may have a financial, professional, or other relationship.

#Wildfire #ClimateTech #DeepTech #Resilience #Innovation

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Elizabeth Zalman is a 4x founder who’s raised ~$80M, built StrongDM, and now leads Sandgarden while also co-authoring “Founder vs Investor: The Honest Truth About Venture Capital from Startup to IPO” with Jerry Neumann.

We talk about how she started as a scrappy eBay/consignment hustle that forced Elizabeth to build software before she ever “became a founder.” Then we go deep on her hard-earned lessons on how to choose investors, run boards without losing control, and why her rule is “Never send your deck.”

In this episode, we cover:

• The “Never Send Your Deck” rule—and how it changes your fundraising dynamics

• Why investors aren’t your friends (and how to build a healthy, productive relationship anyway)

• How to run board meetings that actually help (including when to use pre-reads vs live discussion)

• Sandgarden’s pivot into Doc.Holiday and what AI changes about shipping code and documenting it

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SAVE 10% ON BETTER WEIGHT FOR LIFE’S GLP-1 PROGRAMS WITH CODE AGGAEUS10 (LIMITED TIME).

Better Weight For Life is a transformational weight loss program led by a U.S. board-certified physician—designed to keep it simple: personalized GLP-1 treatment, expert support, and discreet delivery.

They offer options including Ozempic®, Wegovy®, Zepbound®, Mounjaro®, plus compounded semaglutide and compounded tirzepatide (eligibility depends on your medical evaluation).

Claim the offer here: https://www.betterweightforlife.com/partners/aggaeus

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We may feature companies, products, or entities in which Aggaeus, its affiliates, or the author have invested or may invest, or with which they have had, have, or may have a financial, professional, or other relationship.

#Startups #Fundraising #VentureCapital #Founders #AI

🎙 Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.

Eric Malka arrived in NYC on a Greyhound bus with no money, no education, and no green card, and then built The Art of Shaving from a single 200-sq-ft shop into a $100M+ brand acquired by Procter & Gamble. We talk about turning story + customer obsession into a premium brand from creation to exit.

We unpack:

• The “New York Times moment” that took sales from $10K/month to $10K/day

• How to build a culture that scales (and why one bad salesperson can kill a brand)

• M&A lessons: earn-outs, bankers, fear/greed, and protecting founders from themselves

• What Eric does now: Strategic Brand Investments helping founders win in beauty, wellness, and grooming

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SAVE 10% ON BETTER WEIGHT FOR LIFE’S GLP-1 PROGRAMS WITH CODE AGGAEUS10 (LIMITED TIME).

Better Weight For Life is a transformational weight loss program led by a U.S. board-certified physician—designed to keep it simple: personalized GLP-1 treatment, expert support, and discreet delivery.

They offer options including Ozempic®, Wegovy®, Zepbound®, Mounjaro®, plus compounded semaglutide and compounded tirzepatide (eligibility depends on your medical evaluation).

Claim the offer here: https://www.betterweightforlife.com/partners/aggaeus

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Aggaeus content is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should conduct your own research and consult qualified professionals before making any decisions.

We may feature companies, products, or entities in which Aggaeus, its affiliates, or the author have invested or may invest, or with which they have had, have, or may have a financial, professional, or other relationship.

#Entrepreneurship #Branding #Retail #Leadership #Acquisition

🎙 Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.

Ra’anan Cohen has lived the full founder arc: he built one company to an IPO (MobileMax), built another into a unicorn (Bringg), then wrote a brutally honest memoir that became a bestselling business book in Israel—and is now being adapted into a TV series.

In this episode, Ra’anan and Haggai go into the decisions that define a founder’s life: the moment Ra’anan turned down a $10M offer to take money off the table (and what it taught him about risk, ego, and timing), the “Black Swan” events you can’t predict (like the iPhone) that can erase entire business models overnight, and the messy reality of boards, investors, and secondaries—when to take chips off the table, and when to stay hungry.

What you’ll learn

• How to think about “life-changing money” vs. “founder pride”

• Why Black Swans hit founders harder than markets—and how to build resilience anyway

• The real tradeoffs of secondaries, dilution, and investor dynamics

• What Ra’anan wishes he knew from the beginning

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Use this link: https://kardz.biz/?ref=yqrmczty

SAVE 10% ON BETTER WEIGHT FOR LIFE’S GLP-1 PROGRAMS WITH CODE AGGAEUS10 (LIMITED TIME).

Better Weight For Life is a transformational weight loss program led by a U.S. board-certified physician—designed to keep it simple: personalized GLP-1 treatment, expert support, and discreet delivery.

They offer options including Ozempic®, Wegovy®, Zepbound®, Mounjaro®, plus compounded semaglutide and compounded tirzepatide (eligibility depends on your medical evaluation).

Claim the offer here: https://www.betterweightforlife.com/partners/aggaeus

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DISCLAIMER

Some links may earn affiliate commissions. Offers, terms, and availability may change without notice.

Aggaeus content is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should conduct your own research and consult qualified professionals before making any decisions.

We may feature companies, products, or entities in which Aggaeus, its affiliates, or the author have invested or may invest, or with which they have had, have, or may have a financial, professional, or other relationship.

#Startups #Entrepreneurship #VentureCapital #Leadership #Unicorn

🎙 Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.

Haggai is a paying customer of Neal Foard’s Storyfire—and this episode is the “how it actually works” playbook. After 30+ years in advertising and sales, Neal has a simple conviction: most people don’t lose deals because their product is weak—they lose because their story is forgettable.

We talk about the real mechanics behind persuasion: why the best pitches feel like show business, how to turn your messaging into a “love letter” your customers actually want to read, and why “kindness” can be a ruthless competitive advantage when everyone else sounds the same. If you sell anything—an idea, a product, a vision—this conversation will sharpen your edge.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The “Broadway” approach to building a pitch: stakes → tension → payoff

• The love-letter framework that turns features into felt value

• How to make every meeting “the best part of their day” (and win repeat business)

• Why most marketing fails: it’s too smart and not human enough

• Where AI helps—and where humans still dominate: taste, empathy, trust

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When face-to-face impressions matter, pull out Kardz.Biz, the “business card too good to give away”.

Use this link: https://kardz.biz/?ref=yqrmczty

SAVE 10% ON BETTER WEIGHT FOR LIFE’S GLP-1 PROGRAMS WITH CODE AGGAEUS10 (LIMITED TIME).

Better Weight For Life is a transformational weight loss program led by a U.S. board-certified physician—designed to keep it simple: personalized GLP-1 treatment, expert support, and discreet delivery.

They offer options including Ozempic®, Wegovy®, Zepbound®, Mounjaro®, plus compounded semaglutide and compounded tirzepatide (eligibility depends on your medical evaluation).

Claim the offer here: https://www.betterweightforlife.com/partners/aggaeus

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Some links may earn affiliate commissions. Offers, terms, and availability may change without notice.

Aggaeus content is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should conduct your own research and consult qualified professionals before making any decisions.

We may feature companies, products, or entities in which Aggaeus, its affiliates, or the author have invested or may invest, or with which they have had, have, or may have a financial, professional, or other relationship.

#Storytelling #Sales #Persuasion #Leadership #Marketing

🎙 Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.

Yuval Samet helped scale Klarna from ~150 to ~2,000 people—then came back to Israel to tackle the most “quietly painful” problem in daily life: money stress. As CEO of RiseUp, he’s building financial wellbeing at scale by turning messy bank + card data into one clear picture of disposable income, plus step-by-step actions people actually follow.

Yuval grew up with discussions about bank debt “as a guest at the dinner table”. That personal story became the company’s mission—and led to one of the most unconventional go-to-markets you’ll hear: sushi-and-wine house parties with customers about money, to learn how people really talk about finances, earn trust, and build a product that drives behavior change (not just dashboards).

In this episode, we cover:

• Why “compassionate capitalism” is more practical than it sounds

• How RiseUp nudges people into real action: groceries, bills, bank fees, utilities, and more

• What building on WhatsApp taught Yuval about platform risk (the hard way)

• Where AI fits next: from recommendations → automated financial execution

SPONSORS - EXCLUSIVE FOR AGGAEUS PODCAST LISTENERS:

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When face-to-face impressions matter, pull out Kardz.Biz, the “business card too good to give away”.

Use this link: https://kardz.biz/?ref=yqrmczty

SAVE 10% ON BETTER WEIGHT FOR LIFE’S GLP-1 PROGRAMS WITH CODE AGGAEUS10 (LIMITED TIME).

Better Weight For Life is a transformational weight loss program led by a U.S. board-certified physician—designed to keep it simple: personalized GLP-1 treatment, expert support, and discreet delivery.

They offer options including Ozempic®, Wegovy®, Zepbound®, Mounjaro®, plus compounded semaglutide and compounded tirzepatide (eligibility depends on your medical evaluation).

Claim the offer here: https://www.betterweightforlife.com/partners/aggaeus

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Aggaeus content is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should conduct your own research and consult qualified professionals before making any decisions.

We may feature companies, products, or entities in which Aggaeus, its affiliates, or the author have invested or may invest, or with which they have had, have, or may have a financial, professional, or other relationship.

#Money #Fintech #Cashflow #AI #Wellbeing

🎙 Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.

Jason Wolf joins Haggai Klorman Eraqi for a rare, behind-the-scenes conversation about building (and investing) when the world is literally shaking. Jason helped scale TopTier to a $400M cash acquisition by SAP, lived through the Better Place era, and today co-leads Iron Nation—a VC fund created three days after Oct 7 to keep Israeli startups alive when term sheets were getting pulled overnight.

Iron Nation backed 24 startups in its first year—and already celebrated a first exit: illumex → NVIDIA. Jason breaks down what global investors often miss about Israeli resilience, how a wartime fund actually makes decisions, and what “good founders” look like when pressure isn’t theoretical.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How Iron Nation was built in days—and how they selected investments from 1,000+ applicants

• Why term sheets vanished after Oct 7 (and what the best founders did next)

• The 4 traits Jason believes great founders must have (and how to spot them fast)

• The operator-to-investor trap: “I can see the puzzle completed… but the pieces are missing”

• AI’s real impact on jobs, budgets, and why the only move is to participate

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When face-to-face impressions matter, pull out Kardz.Biz, the “business card too good to give away”.

Use this link: https://kardz.biz/?ref=yqrmczty

SAVE 10% ON BETTER WEIGHT FOR LIFE’S GLP-1 PROGRAMS WITH CODE AGGAEUS10 (LIMITED TIME).

Better Weight For Life is a transformational weight loss program led by a U.S. board-certified physician—designed to keep it simple: personalized GLP-1 treatment, expert support, and discreet delivery.

They offer options including Ozempic®, Wegovy®, Zepbound®, Mounjaro®, plus compounded semaglutide and compounded tirzepatide (eligibility depends on your medical evaluation).

Claim the offer here: https://www.betterweightforlife.com/partners/aggaeus

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DISCLAIMER

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Aggaeus content is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should conduct your own research and consult qualified professionals before making any decisions.

We may feature companies, products, or entities in which Aggaeus, its affiliates, or the author have invested or may invest, or with which they have had, have, or may have a financial, professional, or other relationship.

#Startups #VentureCapital #Entrepreneurship #Innovation #Leadership

🎙 Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.

Omer Menashe has been building for nearly two decades—startups, a long-running agency, and now a venture studio designed for the AI era. In this episode, he unpacks the “lifelong entrepreneur” path: why he became a lawyer (and why he quit immediately), how early internet hacking/piracy shaped his builder DNA, and how he turned digital marketing into a repeatable growth engine—powering Clyr, 1Flo, and Lightway Digital.

It’s a conversation about what actually breaks (and what survives) when you build in “digital-only” industries—plus why Omer believes AI is about to compress white-collar work faster than most founders are willing to admit.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

• How his first company scaled mobile dev + education when “mobile” was still rare in Israel

• The agency reality: why “we said yes to everything” worked early—and why it was a long-term mistake

• The most underrated growth channel: relationships, referrals, and “give before you ask” in practice

• Why Omer thinks agencies are in a “golden age” right before AI eats the margins

• His venture studio thesis: shifting from digital labor to physical services/products as an AI hedge

SPONSORS - EXCLUSIVE FOR AGGAEUS PODCAST LISTENERS:

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When face-to-face impressions matter, pull out Kardz.Biz, the “business card too good to give away”.

Use this link: https://kardz.biz/?ref=yqrmczty

SAVE 10% ON BETTER WEIGHT FOR LIFE’S GLP-1 PROGRAMS WITH CODE AGGAEUS10 (LIMITED TIME).

Better Weight For Life is a transformational weight loss program led by a U.S. board-certified physician—designed to keep it simple: personalized GLP-1 treatment, expert support, and discreet delivery.

They offer options including Ozempic®, Wegovy®, Zepbound®, Mounjaro®, plus compounded semaglutide and compounded tirzepatide (eligibility depends on your medical evaluation).

Claim the offer here: https://www.betterweightforlife.com/partners/aggaeus

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Aggaeus content is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should conduct your own research and consult qualified professionals before making any decisions.

We may feature companies, products, or entities in which Aggaeus, its affiliates, or the author have invested or may invest, or with which they have had, have, or may have a financial, professional, or other relationship.

#Aggaeus #Entrepreneurship #VentureStudio #AIFuture #DigitalMarketing

🎙 Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.

Roomer didn’t just survive travel’s worst crash—it rebuilt itself inside the industry. In this episode, Gon Ben David (Co-Founder & CEO, Roomer) breaks down how Roomer went from a bold marketplace for reselling canceled hotel reservations, to partnering with giants like Kayak, to building “cancel-for-any-reason” infrastructure—then pivoting post-COVID into the creator economy, where travel decisions are increasingly driven by people, not platforms.

We talk about the non-obvious distribution lessons most founders miss, how to build partnerships that become your growth engine, and why “taste + data” may be the next frontier in travel discovery.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How Roomer cracked demand with partners instead of burning cash in travel ads

• Why “inventory with an expiration date” changes everything about go-to-market

• The real operational chaos of “cancel-for-any-reason” during COVID (and how they lived through it)

• Why creators are becoming the new travel “experts”—and how Roomer helps them monetize

• A founder’s take on curiosity, humility, and telling the truth when things aren’t working

SPONSORS - EXCLUSIVE FOR AGGAEUS PODCAST LISTENERS:

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When face-to-face impressions matter, pull out Kardz.Biz, the “business card too good to give away”.

Use this link: https://kardz.biz/?ref=yqrmczty

SAVE 10% ON BETTER WEIGHT FOR LIFE’S GLP-1 PROGRAMS WITH CODE AGGAEUS10 (LIMITED TIME).

Better Weight For Life is a transformational weight loss program led by a U.S. board-certified physician—designed to keep it simple: personalized GLP-1 treatment, expert support, and discreet delivery.

They offer options including Ozempic®, Wegovy®, Zepbound®, Mounjaro®, plus compounded semaglutide and compounded tirzepatide (eligibility depends on your medical evaluation).

Claim the offer here: https://www.betterweightforlife.com/partners/aggaeus

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Aggaeus content is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should conduct your own research and consult qualified professionals before making any decisions.

We may feature companies, products, or entities in which Aggaeus, its affiliates, or the author have invested or may invest, or with which they have had, have, or may have a financial, professional, or other relationship.

#Aggaeus #TravelTech #CreatorEconomy #Startups #GoToMarket

🎙 Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.

David Bartholomeusz is a serial entrepreneur who’s built (and let go of) dozens of businesses—not to chase exits, but to design a life with more freedom and more play. In a conversation that starts light and quickly goes deep, David and Haggai unpack what leadership really is when you strip away ego, hustle-culture scripts, and the “CEO identity.”

You’ll hear how David runs rapid, low-cost startup experiments and how leaders evolve from managing followers to leading leaders. If you’re an operator, founder, exec—or just tired of performing success—this is your permission slip to rebuild from the inside out.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The hidden trap of “being the CEO” and why it can hollow you out

• How David tests business ideas quickly (without overbuilding)

• The difference between pain paralysis vs. “ready-to-move” pain

• Why the real product is often peace of mind—not the deliverable

• How to build teams that create autonomy (and stop needing you)

SPONSORS - EXCLUSIVE FOR AGGAEUS PODCAST LISTENERS:

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When face-to-face impressions matter, pull out Kardz.Biz, the “business card too good to give away”.

Use this link: https://kardz.biz/?ref=yqrmczty

SAVE 10% ON BETTER WEIGHT FOR LIFE’S GLP-1 PROGRAMS WITH CODE AGGAEUS10 (LIMITED TIME)

Better Weight For Life is a transformational weight loss program led by a U.S. board-certified physician—designed to keep it simple: personalized GLP-1 treatment, expert support, and discreet delivery.

They offer options including Ozempic®, Wegovy®, Zepbound®, Mounjaro®, plus compounded semaglutide and compounded tirzepatide (eligibility depends on your medical evaluation).

Claim the offer here: https://www.betterweightforlife.com/partners/aggaeus

CONNECT WITH DAVID BARTHOLOMEUSZ

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LUCID DREAMING ONLINE COURSE

Free Introduction to Lucid Dreaming

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Aggaeus content is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should conduct your own research and consult qualified professionals before making any decisions.

We may feature companies, products, or entities in which Aggaeus, its affiliates, or the author have invested or may invest, or with which they have had, have, or may have a financial, professional, or other relationship.

#LeadershipTransformation #EntrepreneurMindset #FounderJourney #HighPerformance #PersonalGrowth

🎙 Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.

Rachel ten Brink has lived the full loop: corporate operator → YC-backed founder → GP at Red Bike Capital. She co-founded Scentbird, helped pioneer early DTC growth (before “playbooks” existed), and now backs founders at pre-seed and seed as a VC.

In this episode, Rachel shares thestory behind the wins: the awkward first meetings, the bad business models, the “almost gave up” moment, and the tactical moves that finally made Scentbird click—pricing discipline, retention-first subscription thinking, and early influencer marketing before it was crowded.

Then we flip to the investor lens: what she actually looks for in founders, why traction beats storytelling (especially for first-timers), and how AI changes the game—without replacing the fundamentals.

You’ll hear:

• The early Scentbird pivots that failed—and the one that finally worked

• Subscription survival: voluntary vs involuntary churn (and why card failures can kill you)

• What YC was like when growth expectations were brutal and simple

• The real advantage of “doing things that don’t scale” to land the first enterprise customers

• Rachel’s founder filter: learning speed, commercial sense, and distribution

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Aggaeus content is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should conduct your own research and consult qualified professionals before making any decisions.

We may feature companies, products, or entities in which Aggaeus, its affiliates, or the author have invested or may invest, or with which they have had, have, or may have a financial, professional, or other relationship.

#VentureCapital #Startups #YC #AI #Founders

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PlayerMaker didn’t build “another sports gadget.” They built a FIFA-certified, footwear-mounted sensor system used by top football organizations—the kind of product that takes years of R&D, brutal accuracy standards, and relentless credibility to earn trust.

In this episode, Yuval Odem (Co-founder & COO) shares how two tiny sensors that clip onto an athlete’s shoes and track foot motion at 1000Hz—then translate raw signals into performance insights that coaches and players can actually use.

But the path there wasn’t glamorous. It started with… kayaks. Then a pivotal hire: a former Nike performance lab leader. Then two years of painstaking development: athletes wearing prototypes while being filmed, students tagging events in slow motion, and algorithms learning how to “understand” every stride, sprint, cut, and touch.

You’ll hear:

• Why PlayerMaker chose football first (even though it’s the hardest sport to put hardware on)

• The breakthrough metrics that change performance: ground contact time, stride length, flight ratio

• How gait asymmetry can flag injury risk before an athlete admits something’s wrong

• The behind-the-scenes reality of landing pro clubs: trials, skepticism, superstition—and earning trust session by session

• The 4-year FIFA certification marathon (safety + accuracy) and why it matters commercially

• The brutal prioritization dilemma of running B2B + B2C at the same time (“I do not recommend it.”)

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SAVE 10% ON BETTER WEIGHT FOR LIFE’S GLP-1 PROGRAMS WITH CODE AGGAEUS10 (LIMITED TIME).

Better Weight For Life is a transformational weight loss program led by a U.S. board-certified physician—designed to keep it simple: personalized GLP-1 treatment, expert support, and discreet delivery.

They offer options including Ozempic®, Wegovy®, Zepbound®, Mounjaro®, plus compounded semaglutide and compounded tirzepatide (eligibility depends on your medical evaluation).

Claim the offer here: https://www.betterweightforlife.com/partners/aggaeus

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Aggaeus content is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should conduct your own research and consult qualified professionals before making any decisions.

We may feature companies, products, or entities in which Aggaeus, its affiliates, or the author have invested or may invest, or with which they have had, have, or may have a financial, professional, or other relationship.

#SportsTech #Football #Performance #Wearables #Entrepreneurship

🎙 Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.

Before Facebook, before Twitter, and before Chrome became what they are today, Outbrain helped shape the modern internet—and grew into a $1B+ revenue, public company with 1,000+ employees.

Ori Lahav, Outbrain’s former CTO and Co-Founder, opens our conversation with: “Entrepreneurship is like living with a chronic disease.” Not because it’s “morbid” — because it’s constant. It never stops calling. And if you’ve felt that “bug,” you’ll recognize yourself instantly.

In this episode, Ori tells the unlikely story: a kid raised in a kibbutz (where “business” and capitalism didn’t exist) secretly learns to code on a PDP computer (a “washing machine” sized relic), disappears from keyboards for a decade… and then gets pulled back in by the dot-com wave — until a sailing trip and a friend’s idea turns into Outbrain.

You’ll hear the behind-the-scenes lessons most founders miss:

• Why Outbrain started as a simple 5-star rating widget (and why bloggers loved it)

• The brutal truth of early-stage: ~2.5 years to get distribution, then 3 pivots in 18 months to find a business model

• The “lighthouse” framework Outbrain used to pivot fast without losing the mission

• The moment Outbrain fired its biggest client to protect “trust” (and the cost of doing the right thing)

• How to build culture when you scale across oceans

• Ori’s core rule: “Trust the other side”

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SAVE 10% ON BETTER WEIGHT FOR LIFE’S GLP-1 PROGRAMS WITH CODE AGGAEUS10 (LIMITED TIME).

Better Weight For Life is a transformational weight loss program led by a U.S. board-certified physician—designed to keep it simple: personalized GLP-1 treatment, expert support, and discreet delivery.

They offer options including Ozempic®, Wegovy®, Zepbound®, Mounjaro®, plus compounded semaglutide and compounded tirzepatide (eligibility depends on your medical evaluation).

Claim the offer here: https://www.betterweightforlife.com/partners/aggaeus

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Aggaeus content is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should conduct your own research and consult qualified professionals before making any decisions.

We may feature companies, products, or entities in which Aggaeus, its affiliates, or the author have invested or may invest, or with which they have had, have, or may have a financial, professional, or other relationship.

#Entrepreneurship #StartupCulture #Leadership #AdTech #AI

🎙 Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.

A Michelin-trained chef builds a premium private aviation catering company, serves royalty + “flying palaces,” survives COVID, then exits. All this while operating in a cutthroat market that is private aviation, where there are basically no contracts, you get <48 hours’ notice, and you are just as good as your last meal.

Daniel Hulme takes you inside a world most people never see: business jets that act as a “time machine” for executives, where flight attendants are the real decision-makers, and why the hardest part isn’t the food—it’s the logistics, systems, and reliability.

This episode is where we unpack:

• How Daniel went from Michelin kitchens → superyachts → America’s Cup chaos → private jets

• The system he built to scale from 5 flights to 70+ flights in a day

• “Heavy metal” wide-body missions (royal fleets, teams, tours) and what those orders actually look like

• Why food tastes different in the air (humidity + salt loss) — and how he engineered for it

• The unexpected COVID pivot: turning aviation infrastructure into a premium home-delivery brand that dominated the press

• The hidden side of exits: burnout, identity crash, and what nobody tells you after the deal closes

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When face-to-face impressions matter, pull out Kardz.Biz, the “business card too good to give away”.

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SAVE 10% ON BETTER WEIGHT FOR LIFE’S GLP-1 PROGRAMS WITH CODE AGGAEUS10 (LIMITED TIME).

Better Weight For Life is a transformational weight loss program led by a U.S. board-certified physician—designed to keep it simple: personalized GLP-1 treatment, expert support, and discreet delivery.

They offer options including Ozempic®, Wegovy®, Zepbound®, Mounjaro®, plus compounded semaglutide and compounded tirzepatide (eligibility depends on your medical evaluation).

Claim the offer here: https://www.betterweightforlife.com/partners/aggaeus

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Aggaeus content is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should conduct your own research and consult qualified professionals before making any decisions.

We may feature companies, products, or entities in which Aggaeus, its affiliates, or the author have invested or may invest, or with which they have had, have, or may have a financial, professional, or other relationship.

#Entrepreneurship #Operations #Negotiation #Aviation #FounderJourney

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Before Mor Assia ever wrote a term sheet, she already had a fascination with tech companies. As a kid, she’d flip to the tiny “Israelis on Nasdaq” section of the newspaper and track the numbers. At home, dinner conversations were about who founded what, who raised, who exited, and who’s building next.

Fast-forward: Mor becomes a Technion-trained engineer, serves in 8200, codes, climbs corporate strategy at IBM/Amdocs… and still, something nags at her.

She keeps hearing the same frustration from smart global investors:

“We only see Israeli deals after they cross the Atlantic—when the insiders already took the best entry.”

It felt like a broken bridge. A market inefficiency. A network problem.

So Mor and her partners built iAngels to fix it—starting with a brutal cold start:

no platform, no capital flywheel, founders asking “how much can you really commit?”, and a model that didn’t yet exist in Israel. They took risk, stitched supply and demand together, and built what Mor calls “a network of networks”— a global base of ultra-high-net-worth operators and builders.

Today, iAngels is an early-stage VC with:

• 120+ investments

• $550M+ deployed

• 27 profitable exits

• experience from seed to IPO and public boards

In this episode, Mor breaks down what most people don’t see:

• Why Israel’s “startup dinner table” culture is an unfair advantage

• How iAngels evolved from co-investment into a true early-stage VC platform

• What founders misunderstand about dilution vs. partnership

• Why “over-engineering” kills startups (especially now)

• How AI is rewriting the rules of competition—and what she expects from founders next

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When face-to-face impressions matter, pull out Kardz.Biz, the “business card too good to give away”.

Use this link: https://kardz.biz/?ref=yqrmczty

SAVE 10% ON BETTER WEIGHT FOR LIFE’S GLP-1 PROGRAMS WITH CODE AGGAEUS10 (LIMITED TIME).

Better Weight For Life is a transformational weight loss program led by a U.S. board-certified physician—designed to keep it simple: personalized GLP-1 treatment, expert support, and discreet delivery.

They offer options including Ozempic®, Wegovy®, Zepbound®, Mounjaro®, plus compounded semaglutide and compounded tirzepatide (eligibility depends on your medical evaluation).

Claim the offer here: https://www.betterweightforlife.com/partners/aggaeus

CONNECT WITH MOR ASSIA

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The best wat to reach Mor is via email, and you can find her email at the end of the episode :)

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Aggaeus content is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should conduct your own research and consult qualified professionals before making any decisions.

We may feature companies, products, or entities in which Aggaeus, its affiliates, or the author have invested or may invest, or with which they have had, have, or may have a financial, professional, or other relationship.

#VentureCapital #Startups #FinTech #IsraelTech #AI

🎙 Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.

After ELLI•Q™ landed above-the-fold on the New York Times front page, Dor Skuler—CEO & Co-Founder of Intuition Robotics—joins Haggai Klorman Eraqi to unpack how you build trust, etiquette, and real companionship with a machine.

Dor shares the decade-long journey that started long before Amazon even shipped Alexa, survived 80+ investor “no’s,” and finally created ELLI•Q™, a proactive AI robot designed to reduce loneliness, improve wellness behaviors, and connect families—without turning people into “the product.”

If you’re interested in AI, robotics, health, or any mission-driven market, this episode is a masterclass and a must-listen.

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When face-to-face impressions matter, pull out Kardz.Biz, the “business card too good to give away”.

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DISCLAIMER

Some links may earn affiliate commissions. Offers, terms, and availability may change without notice.

Aggaeus content is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should conduct your own research and consult qualified professionals before making any decisions.

We may feature companies, products, or entities in which Aggaeus, its affiliates, or the author have invested or may invest, or with which they have had, have, or may have a financial, professional, or other relationship.

#AI #Robotics #HealthTech #Loneliness #Startups

🎙 Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.

Roi Bar-Kat leads Intel Capital’s investing in Israel—and he’s helped back companies across AI, deep tech, cybersecurity, and more. In this conversation with Haggai Klorman Eraqi, Roi breaks down what consistently separates the startups that earn conviction (and outcomes) from the ones that don’t: founder quality, storytelling, and defensibility in an AI-accelerated world.

We go from Roi’s “non-traditional” path into venture to Intel Capital’s unusually strong model for combining financial discipline with long-term strategic value. Along the way, Roi shares a practical pitching framework, two lists every founder should write, why deep tech is getting even more compelling, and what AI could mean for the next wave of companies.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• Why Intel Capital shifted toward investing in “the best companies first”—and how that creates strategic value

• What makes a founder investable

• How AI is reshaping SaaS risk and boosting deep tech opportunity

• Why single-founder companies are harder to bet on

• What “physical AI” looks like and why it’s defensible

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Some links may earn affiliate commissions. Offers, terms, and availability may change without notice.

Aggaeus content is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should conduct your own research and consult qualified professionals before making any decisions.

We may feature companies, products, or entities in which Aggaeus, its affiliates, or the episode participants have invested or may invest, or with which they have had, have, or may have a financial, professional, or other relationship.

#VentureCapital #Startups #AI #DeepTech #Pitching

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Orly Shoavi has done what most founders only talk about: built through the “two years in the desert,” found a breakout wedge, and exited—then came back for round two with ClarityQ. In this episode, Orly (Co-Founder & CEO, ClarityQ) sits down with Haggai Klorman Eraqi to unpack the real founder journey: choosing a co-founder like a marriage, surviving the emotional whiplash of acquisition talks, and the moment SafeDK unlocked growth by shifting from “everyone loves it” to “everyone pays.”

Then we fast-forward to ClarityQ—the pain Orly felt firsthand at scale: teams drowning in data but blocked by bottlenecked analysts. She explains why GenAI made this problem solvable now, how ClarityQ builds trust (transparency, SQL visibility, human-in-the-loop), and what it means to move from prompt engineering to context engineering.

What you’ll learn:

• How Orly vetted a co-founder—and why alignment beats “perfectly different skill sets”

• The SafeDK wedge: monitoring SDKs → ad intelligence → explosive demand (and why it started as “just a feature”)

• The acquisition roller coaster: term sheet, sudden freeze, brutal uncertainty… then a better all-cash offer

• Why “waiting on analysts” slows decisions—and how ClarityQ helps teams move faster

• How to trust AI analytics: plans, steps, SQL, guardrails, and analyst verification workflows

• Orly’s advice to her younger self: start earlier

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Aggaeus content is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should conduct your own research and consult qualified professionals before making any decisions.

We may feature companies, products, or entities in which Aggaeus, its affiliates, or the author have invested or may invest, or with which they have had, have, or may have a financial, professional, or other relationship.

#StartupJourney #ProductMarketFit #GenAI #DataAnalytics #FounderLessons

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For 30+ years, Eugene Buff has been the behind-the-scenes “bridge” between breakthrough science and the companies that actually bring it to market—from university tech transfer offices drowning in inventions to global corporates hunting for the next edge. He’s a MD/PhD geneticist, a former Harvard Medical School researcher whose papers still get cited… and the rare operator who walked away from NIH funding to pursue commercialization full-time.

In this conversation with Haggai Klorman Eraqi, Eugene tells the story of how he realized the Nobel line was “too long,” and reinvented himself as an innovation strategist who helps organizations answer the hard question: Is this worth building—or should we kill it fast?

You’ll hear:

• Why you’re not commercializing inventions—you’re solving problems

• The surprising reason Eugene’s default approach is to try to kill the project

• What “open innovation” really means

• How strategic partnerships, licensing, sponsored research, and venture differ

• When getting a patent is the wrong move

If you’re building “deep tech,” spinning out IP, or trying to land a corporate partner without getting crushed by bureaucracy—this episode is for you.

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Some links may earn affiliate commissions. Offers, terms, and availability may change without notice.

Aggaeus content is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should conduct your own research and consult qualified professionals before making any decisions.

We may feature companies, products, or entities in which Aggaeus, its affiliates, or the author have invested or may invest, or with which they have had, have, or may have a financial, professional, or other relationship.

#OpenInnovation #DeepTech #TechTransfer #StartupStrategy #Innovation

🎙 Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.

If you’re building in AI and you think “human cognition” is just more training data, this episode will challenge you.

Assaf Horowitz is the Co-Founder & CEO of BrainVivo, a computational neuroscientist working at the edge of sci-fi and enterprise reality: scanning real brains and building “brain twins” — digital models that can predict how a specific expert or audience will feel, value, and decide inside a defined domain. Not a generic model. Not a persona. A measurable cognitive fingerprint.

Assaf watched his grandmother—Tova Horowitz, a Holocaust survivor and the smartest person in his world—fade away from Alzheimer’s. The pain wasn’t only losing her. It was watching a lifetime of judgment, perception, and problem-solving disappear with no way to preserve it. That question becomes the company: what if we could capture parts of a mind’s “operating system” — and make it usable?

Then it gets wild (and concrete). BrainVivo takes a 45–60 minute MRI session, maps your brain’s wiring (connectome) and activity (fMRI), feeds you controlled stimuli (images, sound, even smell/taste), and trains a “translator” between the world’s inputs and your brain’s internal response. The output is a brain twin that can be tested on new stimuli and used to predict intuition-level reactions.

Assaf shares two case studies that make this real:

• Cloning expertise: a Michelin-star chef who literally “hears” tomatoes (synesthesia). BrainVivo built a culinary brain twin and hit ~85% accuracy on the gist of his judgments across dozens of dishes—opening the door to scaling founder-level taste and consistency across locations.

• Predicting markets & behavior: a project with one of the world’s largest investment banks using digitized audience brains reacting to hourly news headlines, producing a high correlation with the market’s fear index (VIX).

• An experiment that beat a gaming company’s internal selection by choosing creatives that dominated click performance.

This is a founder conversation about the next AI frontier: not just smarter models, but more human ones.

In this episode

• What a “brain twin” is—and what it can (and can’t) capture today

• Why language is a crude interface for thought, and where LLMs flatten human depth

• How MRI + stimuli + an encoding/translation model becomes a usable cognitive agent

• Why Assaf believes “NeuroAI” is the next step after LLMs

• The ethics: data ownership, anonymization, and why your mind shouldn’t be scraped

CONNECT WITH ASSAF

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Some links may earn affiliate commissions. Offers, terms, and availability may change without notice.

Aggaeus content is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should conduct your own research and consult qualified professionals before making any decisions.

We may feature companies, products, or entities in which Aggaeus, its affiliates, or the author have invested or may invest, or with which they have had, have, or may have a financial, professional, or other relationship.

#NeuroAI #DeepTech #Startups #Cognition #AI